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Western German police chiefs have suspended an officer after they discovered he belonged to a branch of Salafist Muslim fundamentalists, and had been distributing radical religious material, it was reported on Tuesday.

“Disciplinary action is underway, with the aim to dismiss the man from the police force,” North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Ralf Jäger confirmed on Tuesday. It is the first time a policeman has been suspended for radical beliefs in Germany.

The head of the Essen police force told the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper that the suspended officer does not believe in the German constitution, which is required of police officers - rather he holds Islamic law to be paramount. When questioned by state security if he lived under Islamic law, he said only that “what he believed privately was his business.”